Let’s Talk About Hate Speech, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

…visionary leadership is needed to mediate bitterness and mis-understanding and give every section of Nigeria a sense of equal worth, not necessarily attained at the expense of others. In this enterprise, however, Nigeria has largely been luckless… The PDP governments of recent years made a mess. President Buhari promised to change it but has deepened the mess.

Nigeria’s federal government has chosen to declare a war on hate speech. Some of its senior-most officers appear uncertain about the applicable laws. Keen not to be left behind, the ruling party seems willing to make a party political issue out of the matter. The desire of the government is not misplaced but any effort to gain party political mileage out of hate speech risks destroying a currency that should be jealously guarded.

Addressing the National Economic Council in Abuja on August 17, 2017, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo announced that the government had “drawn a line against hate speech, it will not be tolerated, it will be taken as an act of terrorism and all of the consequences will follow it”. He explained that “hate speech is a specie of terrorism. Terrorism as it is defined popularly is the unlawful use of violence or intimidation against individuals or groups especially for political ends.”

Five days earlier, on August 11, Interior minister, Abdulrahman Dambazau, a retired General, informed the media at the end of a meeting of the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), that “a draft bill to the Ministry of Justice on hate speech which will go as an executive bill after passing through the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation to the National Assembly.” Right on cue, Senate president, Bukola Saraki, announced on August 15 that the National Assembly will consider such a bill on a fast track.

The optics of using a party meeting to enunciate a policy on hate speech didn’t look good. Even worse, the Interior minister was wrong in law and in fact: Nigeria does not need a new law to deal with hate speech. There are ample laws in the books.

Vice President Osinbajo clearly knows. He is a law professor, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and one of Nigeria’s brightest lawyers, and it shows. Nigeria’s Terrorism (Prevention) Act of 2011, amended in 2013, prohibits among many things, acts that “seriously intimidate a population”. These include acts that “incite, promise or induce any other person by any means whatsoever to commit any act of terrorism.”

In its advisory on election violence in February 2015, the National Human Rights Commission complained of an election “characterized by bellicose rhetoric” and “a rise in hate speech”. Government has been somehow unwilling to act firmly with the instrumentality of the law but it’s never too late to do right.

The Electoral Act prohibits “abusive language directly or indirectly likely to injure religious, ethnic, tribal or sectional feelings”, as well as the use of “abusive, intemperate or slanderous or base language or insinuations or innuendoes designed or likely to provoke violent reaction or emotions.” Incitement to hate is a crime under both the Criminal and Penal Codes.

The rationale for this in law is obvious: hate speech is not protected speech.

Four questions, however, call for attention. First, what is hate speech? The answer to this is not easy. In September 2013, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued General Comment No. 35 on “Racist Hate Speech”, in which it clarified that, “hate speech can take many forms and is not confined to explicitly racial remarks.” The Committee pointed out that “speech attacking particular racial or ethnic groups may employ indirect language in order to disguise its targets and objectives.” The jurisprudence has somewhat tracked the famous formulation of US Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, from 1964, in relation to obscenity: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”

Second, how often does hate speech occur in Nigeria and how serious is it? Digital expression has enhanced both the immediacy of hate speech and the capacity to monitor it. The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in Kano, which tracks hate speech in Nigeria, has recently published an analysis of its monitoring, undertaken over six months covering June to December 2016. Over this period, it recorded 6,258 incidents, a monthly average of 1,043 incidents. Hate speech directed at religion accounted for 2,603 or 41.59 percent, while those directed against ethnicity or tribe accounted for another 39.13 percent. In other words, between them, religion and ethnicity were the focus of 80.72 percent of the incidents of recorded hate speech. With considerable understatement, CITAD concludes that “this means that Nigerians are becoming (more) ethnically and religiously insensitive, even intolerant.”

Third, why now? Hate speech in Nigeria is not new but it seems to have gotten worse with increasing political competition. In 2011, following the post-election violence (PEV) in parts of northern Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan constituted an Investigative Panel headed by Sheikh Ahmed Lemu, former Grand Khadi of Niger State. In its report, the Sheikh Lemu Panel found a pattern of “threats, verbal intimidation, hate speech, disinformation” and concluded that a major cause of the PEV was “inflammatory campaign utterances of politicians….reinforced by the preaching of divisive sermons of hate and hostility in mosques and churches across the country.” In its advisory on election violence in February 2015, the National Human Rights Commission complained of an election “characterized by bellicose rhetoric” and “a rise in hate speech”. Government has been somehow unwilling to act firmly with the instrumentality of the law but it’s never too late to do right.

Effective and even-handed law enforcement can help. Government communication needs to be more honest and transparent. To achieve that, it will need to be conducted more in verbs and less in adjectives.

Fourth, how can we deal with hate speech? Information minister, Lai Mohammed, claims that “all these fake news/hate speech is just to distort the hard work of the government,” and asks Nigeria’s media to “self-regulate or self-destruct.” The figures don’t support him and his effort to appropriate concern about hate speech for partisan political purposes is dreadful and desperate. His lines feed a strong perception that an increasingly intolerant ruling party has cottoned onto hate speech not out of any altruistic reasons but to undercut free expression. That is not allowable.

It is necessary to get the diagnosis right. In his Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War: Facing the Future, published in 1969, Ralph Uwechue laments that “the principal cause of our current tragedy is bitterness born of misunderstanding.” In October 1972, then head of state, General Gowon, condemned political activity “which tend to cause sectional hatred”. Far from progress, the country has retrogressed deeply in the intervening 45 years. The pathology of hate in Nigeria has deep roots and considerable resilience. We don’t have enough bullets to shoot it into extinction.

Effective and even-handed law enforcement can help. Government communication needs to be more honest and transparent. To achieve that, it will need to be conducted more in verbs and less in adjectives.

Above all, visionary leadership is needed to mediate bitterness and mis-understanding and give every section of Nigeria a sense of equal worth, not necessarily attained at the expense of others. In this enterprise, however, Nigeria has largely been luckless. Military rule profited from manufactured divisions while spouting hollow doctrines of unity. The PDP governments of recent years made a mess. President Buhari promised to change it but has deepened the mess. Segun Adeniyi is right when he wrote recently that “the post-election utterances of President Muhammadu Buhari energised certain subliminal impulses in our society.” Partisanship on hate speech will guarantee that we’ll never be able to get those impulses under control.

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu chairs the Council of the Section on Public Interest and Development Law (SPIDEL) of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).

Information reaching us is that PDP Governors of South East states planned to have the process disrupted and postponed so that they can watch the ‘expected marginal lead’ of APC from other zones before stuffing the boxes and writing figures on INEC’s result sheets. Card reader jamming devices may have been deployed in the South East and it worked together with hacking INEC’s website. It is a wonder why INEC’s result sheets that got to the SE states yesterday could not be produced today. Accreditation was deliberately delayed to have counting delayed into late evening so that ballot boxes can be snatched under the dark. Paid job.

Otu

This is the best and most objective treatment of the I have read on hate speech in Nigeria – short, readable, informed, balanced. Impressive!

Arabakpura

I have come to realize that Buhari is not the man needed at this time of Nigeria’s journey to “Nationhood!” He could do better by being sent to be a combatant in a remote sambisa forest enclave if Nigeria were to gain anything out of him!

BEN IKARI

Truth told about individuals and ethnic groups, religions, which evidence exist of their anti-social or anti-civility acts, including activities or actions of their leaders, preachers, evangelists, imams and so forth can not become so-called hate speech culprit. If what is said about an ethnic group or people and organizations including corporations, an individual or government, especially the president or vice, ministers or director generals and attorney-general; governors and local government chairpersons alongside lawmakers (call them public officials and public figures) at all levels, is false and aims to deliberately cause disrepute and discord, threats or incitement, the story can or should be different and the unlawfully military laws if accepted by the people could or should take their course.

If what is said about or against an ethnic group and other groups or persons is the truth, then the truth is the truth and must or shall stay the truth and as its own protector. Like the writer said unequivocally, treating every group and person with respect and fairly and serving justice across the board and honestly so should be the focus, not the criminalization of speeches that are true and speaks truth to power.

I therefore do not care how they try to paint things. I will continue to say that Nigeria was created for the economic convenience or interest of rogue or criminal Britain or Britons and imposed on mostly unwilling precolonial ethnic nations, which were independent before the unlawful and illegal, criminal invasion. If today the colonial masters will be facing the ICC for crimes against persons, ethnic groups or nations and humanity. Thus, I will not cease to say that I am Ogoni and not a Nigerian; that Nigeria is currently colonizing Ogoni so will continue to state the crimes of colonial Nigeria against Ogoni and other oil producing communities or ethnic nations.

I will continually declare that the current constitution used in Nigeria is a unitary one made possible by the military and unlawfully so since the administrations of government in recent years (1999 to date) have been based and running on a seemingly civil platform, thus the laws designed by military dictatorship can not be used in a civil system if the country is not sick. In addition, I shall state without reservation the fact that the only thing keeping Nigeria is oil from South-south and force, and that without oil most of the about 23 states created by military fiat for Hausa-Fulanis, Yorubas and Igbos can not survive for 6 months.

It is of course clear that more than 90 percent of the 36 states in Nigeria are not viable. As a result they can not create revenue nor budget thus can not pay one month salaries without sharing oil money on monthly basis. I will also continue to say that because of the unfair state creation which benefit the North, especially Hausa-Fulanis, and also benefit Yorubas and Igbos the National Assembly is predominated or hijacked by these WAZOBIA’s ethnic groups. That although they claim to be major or majority ethnic groups while lying about de-emphasizing ethnicity, which they have and are still benefiting from, can not use their magnified number or population to create more for themselves rather depend parasitically and violently on oil money.

That these groups therefore create fertile ground for national laziness (which anniversary should be remembered from this year), lack of economic and otherwise healthy competition, development and stability, peace alongside growth. Not only are the above assertions true, it is also a truism that these groups watched and encouraged the deliberate pollution of Ogoni, Ijaw land and other oil producing nations then harassing and killing the people when they complain and demand justice. What is also true is that Nigeria will not change and work for every ethnic group unless oil dries off or it is no longer profitable. Sadly, at such point the country will be in hottest mess since it has nothing to turn to. The current oil producing ethnic nations will seek pity then and shall be shamed for allowing these three ethnic groups, which dominate, control and are mismanaging the country to continue using military laws to expropriate their oil wealth then share peanuts to them like a colonial or slave master.

Finally, I will say it louder that, for allowing and supporting Nigeria, which Hausa-Fulanis claimed they were born to rule to deny them self-determination via true fiscal federalism that brings resource generation, ownership and control or management as operated in USA and other true federations, the oil communities will be sorry when oil runs dry or no longer profitable likely due to global transformation from fossil fuel usage to different forms of renewable energies. And that greed, political and white color criminality, corruption and violence will not reduce or stop except oil producing communities stop all flow of oil and renegotiate a new deal that should allow every group or region think, create, generate revenue and pay taxes to the central government which should then be creative and also generate its revenue, assist states and local councils when necessary and not control everything including oil wells at the back of someone else building or under the grave of family members then share the oil in blocs to mostly Hausa-Fulanis who have no oil in their land nor does most of them know the road to where the oil wells in their names are located.

These are facts…the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and no one, no law or president, National Assembly has any right to criminalize the truth by calling truth HATE SPEECH, especially because the bitter truth touches on their greed, incompetence, violence and ethnic domination, and chauvinism.